If Perez, a former senator, snored, Howes plugged his ears. If Howes, a contract pilot for the U.S. Defense Department, rose at dawn to exercise, Perez grudgingly rolled out of bed, too. If one had to go to the latrine, the other followed.

"I had some fights with Tom over stupid stuff, but we got over them," said Perez, 55, who was suddenly released by the guerrillas in February after nearly seven years in captivity. "He is a marvelous human being."

Now free to roam the world, Perez is working to liberate those he left behind.

The guerrillas are still holding hundreds of Colombian hostages as well as Howes and two fellow U.S. contractors, Keith Stansell and Marc Gonsalves. The rebels captured the three Americans in 2003 after their surveillance plane crashed while on an anti-drug mission.

Since his release, Perez has met with Presidents Alvaro Uribe of Colombia, Rafael Correa of Ecuador and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. He has traveled to Europe and he spent much of last week in Washington, conferring with Bush administration officials, aides for the three presidential candidates and reporters.

"It was a very powerful visit," said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass, who has taken up the cause of the rebel-held hostages. "It brought home the fact that these are real people with families, not just statistics."

Authority to speak

When Perez first emerged from the jungle on Feb. 28, he was skinny, sick, covered with bug bites and something of an unknown.

By contrast, former hostage Clara Rojas, a Colombian lawyer and politician who had been released shortly before Perez, captivated Colombians with her account of giving birth to a baby boy via emergency Caesarean section in a rebel camp.

Yet Perez has emerged as perhaps the most clear-headed, engaging, and energetic of the six hostages released earlier this year by Colombia's largest guerrilla army, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

"I criticize both the guerrillas and the government," Perez said during a three-hour interview at his Bogota apartment shortly before leaving for Washington. "I didn't come out of the jungle with Stockholm Syndrome. That gives me the authority to speak."

Perez was kidnapped on June 10, 2001. Rather than seeking a ransom, the rebels added Perez to a high-profile group of politicians, police and soldiers held to pressure Uribe into releasing imprisoned guerrillas.

As the months turned into years, Perez grew desperate. He recalled trying to escape five times but was promptly recaptured.

Perez's sixth attempt to break out of a rebel jungle prison was supposed to be a team effort. He planned to make a run for it with former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, who was kidnapped in 2002, and a Colombian policeman named John Pinchao.

Plotting their escape

The three had secretly broken their chains and were hoarding supplies for their journey. Pinchao was in charge of the food, while Perez secretly gathered up tarps and mosquito nets. The three were waiting for a stormy night when the rain would cover the noise of their movements.

"We were ready to go," Perez said.

But one afternoon, Perez and Pinchao got into an argument. The fight left the policeman deeply depressed, and Perez later spotted him crying in his hammock. The next morning, Pinchao and the food were gone.

At first, Perez was livid. But his anger turned to sadness when the guerrillas informed him that Pinchao had been killed by a snake.

The rebels were lying. Pinchao survived in the wilderness for 17 days until he was picked up by a police search-and-rescue team. When Perez and the other hostages hear the news on the radio, they began shouting: "Pinchao! Pinchao! Pinchao!"

But the celebration was short-lived. Angry guerrillas began firing their automatic rifles at the hostages' feet and chained them together to prevent another escape.

Eight months later, Perez was part of a group of hostages released to Venezuelan officials in an effort by the FARC to bolster the image of Chavez, the country's socialist leader who had offered to serve as a go-between.

One of the first well-wishers to greet Perez was Pinchao. The policeman got down on his knees and begged for forgiveness for taking all the food, but Perez would have none of it.

"I hugged him and told him he was a hero," Perez said.

Since his release, Perez has criticized the low-profile manner in which the Bush administration has dealt with the three American hostages. Neither President Bush nor Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice mentioned the hostages on recent trips to Colombia.

That's partly because U.S. officials do not want to raise the value of the hostages in the eyes of the guerrillas.

Talking liberation

But Perez says the official silence shows confusion about what the Americans were really doing in Colombia and has left the three U.S. hostages deeply depressed. With so much time on their hands, the Americans often talk about what they'll do when they're freed.

For a while, Perez said, they fantasized about turning their story into a film and selling the rights for $1 million to be split three ways. They decided that Oliver Stone should direct the movie. But in December, Stone traveled to Colombia to film his own documentary about the hostages crisis.

"They almost died" of disappointment, Perez said with a smile. "When they'd learned that they'd lost out on the business, I think that was the hardest day they've had since the kidnapping."

Chronicle reporter Stewart Powell in Washington contributed to this article.